Michigan Lawmakers Propose Partnership for New Bridge Between Detroit, Ontario

This story appears in the June 13 print edition of Transport Topics.

A new bill introduced in the Michigan legislature would allow the state and Canada to build a long-awaited bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, a project vigorously supported by truckers, automakers and labor unions in the Great Lakes region.

Unveiled June 7, the bill would set up a joint Canadian-Michigan authority and let Michigan partner with Canada and private investors to build and operate the publicly owned $5.3 billion bridge.

Michigan has no legal mechanism for public-private partnerships, known as P3s, which have allowed other states to finance large infrastructure projects.

A similar bridge bill died in committee last year, the victim of an intense lobbying campaign by the owners of the only existing bridge over the Detroit River, the 82-year-old Ambassador Bridge, which belongs to Detroit trucking and real estate executive Matty Moroun and his family.

The story will be different this year, said Tom Shields, spokesman for the business and labor coalition fighting to get the new crossing over the Detroit River.

“The legislators know here that the arguments are right,” Shields said.

Bridge backers say the project will generate more than 10,000 construction jobs and boost trade growth along the border.

“Legislators know this is a good project. It’s just the politics that’s getting in the way and the amount of money being spent on the other side,” Shields said.

He also said Moroun is spending millions of dollars on radio and television ads against the project, has sent mailings into every state Senate district and is contributing heavily to the Michigan chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative organization founded and funded by oil business brothers Charles and David Koch.

The Michigan AFP chapter is leading the opposition to the new bridge. Chapter director Scott Hagerstrom would not confirm or deny that Moroun contributed and said AFP does not make its donor list public.

“We don’t need a government-funded bridge,” Hagerstrom said by way of explaining why AFP is opposed.

Traffic tie-ups at the Ambassador are the fault of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, Hagerstrom said.

Michigan tea party groups also oppose the bridge project. On its website, AFP displays videos of rallies it has “done” with tea party groups in opposition to the project.

“There are over 50 tea parties here in Michigan,” Hagerstrom said.

Moroun has long argued that a new bridge is unnecessary because traffic related to automobile manufacturing on both sides of the border has declined since the 1990s, in concert with the decline of American automakers.

With traffic fading, the tolls generated by a new crossing would not be sufficient to pay its construction costs, Moroun argues.

Shields scoffs at the argument, saying the Detroit-Windsor crossing is the busiest trade corridor in North America.

“Ford Motor Company has 600 trips a day across that bridge,” he said.

The traffic argument is “a straw man that they keep using,” Shields said.

“We have twice as many trucks that go thru the Detroit-Windsor corridor than go through the Buffalo-Niagara corridor, yet, they have four bridges and 14 lanes,” he said.

Moroun wants to build a second span and also upgrade the existing Ambassador span but Canada has said it will not give him the necessary permits.

As it is, the single-span Ambassador Bridge puts thousands of trucks a day onto a Windsor city street.

“There are only 16 stoplights between Montreal and Houston, Texas, and they’re all right there in Windsor,” Shields said.

“It’s a horrible situation. It’s a bridge, frankly, that maybe made sense back in 1929 when it was built, but it’s in the wrong location. It cannot deliver freeway-to-freeway connection,” he said.

Shields also said that because the Ambassador is the only span available to large trucks in the trade corridor, if “something happens to that bridge, Michigan, much less the Midwest, across the country, businesses are screwed.”

Canada is so anxious to have a new publicly owned bridge it has pledged to pay Michigan’s $550 million share of construction costs for approach roads on the state side of the river. The money would be paid back from bridge tolls.

And after the Canadian government finished its budget June 6, the Ontario Trucking Association released a statement applauding the government for keeping its financial commitment to the bridge.

“Hopefully, this budget commitment will help the efforts in Lansing by Gov. Rick Snyder to get the Michigan Legislature to finally move forward on this important project,” OTA?said in the statement.

Ever since his inauguration in January, the Republican governor has traveled around the state saying the new bridge would help mend Michigan’s tattered economy.

Snyder has asked lawmakers to act on the enabling bridge legislation before they break for the Fourth of July holiday, Shields said.